Page 339 -

Chapter 13
Cartography and Navigation

Process models can be seen as the “maps” describing the operational processes of
organizations. Similarly, information systems can be looked at as “navigation sys-
tems” guiding the flow of work in organizations. Unfortunately, many organiza-
tions fail in creating and maintaining accurate business process maps. Often process
models are outdated and have little to do with reality. Moreover, most information
systems fail to provide the functionality offered by today’s navigation systems. For
instance, workers are not guided by the information system and need to work be-
hind the system’s back to get things done. Moreover, useful information such as the
“estimated arrival time” of a running case is not provided. Process mining can help
to overcome some of these problems.

13.1 Business Process Maps

The first geographical maps date back to the 7th Millennium BC. Since then car-
tographers have improved their skills and techniques to create maps thereby ad-
dressing problems such as clearly representing desired traits, eliminating irrelevant
details, reducing complexity, and improving understandability. Today, most geo-
graphic maps are digital and of high quality. This has fueled innovative applications
of cartography as is illustrated by modern car navigation systems (e.g., TomTom,
Garmin, and Navigon), Google Maps, mashups using geo-tagging, etc. There are
thousands of mashups using Google Maps, e.g., applications projecting information
about traffic conditions, real estate, fastfood restaurants, or movie showtimes onto
a selected map. People can seamlessly zoom in and out using such maps and inter-
act with it, e.g., traffic jams are projected onto the map and the user can select a
particular problem to see details.
Process models can be seen as the “business process maps” describing the op-
erational processes of organizations [94]. Unfortunately, accurate business process
maps are typically missing. Process models tend to be outdated and not aligned
with reality. Moreover, unlike geographic maps, process models are typically not
well understood by end users.
W.M.P. van der Aalst, Process Mining, 321
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-19345-3_13, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011